Fitness Challenge: 5K Results

My brother and his girlfriend were kind enough to run/walk with me at my pace. We finished in 40 minutes. I have probably been at around a 15 minute-mile pace on my shorter runs, so it looks like I probably shaved a minute per mile off, in the much longer run.

During the second half of the 5K, my running intervals were very short. It was a stretch just to run for five minutes during those times.

I feel good.

Fitness Challenge - 5K Tomorrow

Tomorrow I'll be running in a 5K run for breast cancer here in Lexington. We'll see how it goes -- I'm thinking if I run 1/2 mile, walk 1/2 mile, run 1/2 mile, walk 1/2 a mile, etc. I'll make it pretty well.

Pics from Stolen Laptop End Up on Flickr

If you steal a laptop (or buy a stolen laptop) be careful of built-in cameras. this Canadian guy, who allegedly bought the laptop from a friend, ended up with his shirt-less pictures across the Internet. He turned in the laptop to the police after the news spread like wildfire -- and with his abundance of tattoos, it must have been easy to identify him once it spread to his area.

Be careful of buying laptops from friends. And this kind of makes me glad my Powerbook doesn't have a camera built-in!

HT: Lifehacker

SquidWho: Mark Driscoll

I have made a Squidoo lens about Mark Driscoll. It is in a somewhat basic state at this point, but I have added some content. Go check it out! Proceeds as of today are going to the Blood:Water Mission.

FItness Challenge -- Run 13

Total Distance: 1.6 mi
Running Distance: .93
Longest Run: .8 mi

We pushed it tonight and made it to about eight tenths of a mile. It looks like we could hit the one mile mark pretty soon! I think after we can run a mile comfortably we can start incorporating longer runs once a week or so - I've seen that in running schedules.

Fitness Challenge -- Run 12

Non-Stop Running Distance: .66 mi
Total Running .8 mi
Total Distance 1.1 mi

I was able to up my distance for running without walking tonight. My buddy was not able to join me this time. I did bring an iPod with me and listened to Steve Fee on the Catalyst Podcast. I think it was a helpful distraction during the run.

As my running distance begins to take up my entire route, I guess I will start looking to up my distance. Still feeling good. Occasionally my knee feels a little weird. That was my worry coming into this -- I am putting a lot of pressure on my joints.

Someday I would like to...

• establish a regular frequent pattern of family worship
• plant a church that plants other churches
• weigh less than 200 pounds
• adopt a child
• serve as a cross-cultural missionary
• finish seminary
• speak another language fluently
• establish a routine of getting out of bed early
• run a 5k

Disclaimer: these aren't exactly goals. Some of them are. Some are things that I care about but am still really seeking direction and calling in. FYI.

Dr. John Piper Shares A Prayer Concern

Dr. Piper has been expecting a new grandchild - Felicity Margaret Piper. He recounts their loss of the child in this note.


The phone call came to me first. It was Abraham through sobs, “We lost the baby.”

Noel and I arrived in a half hour. No explanation of the loss, not yet. After a couple hours they go home to get ready to induce later in the afternoon. At 1:30 PM they come to our home on the way to the hospital. Abraham’s brothers Karsten and Ben and their wives Shelly and Melissa are there. I read 2 Samuel 12:15-23, John 9:1-3, and 1 Corinthians 15:58 acknowledging that the word play on “labor” in verse 58 is not meant to be cute. We gathered around them and prayed. Ben drove them to the hospital. I went to church and dedicated 9 babies and preached from 1 Samuel 12:1-25, “The Sinful Origin of the Son of Man.” Then I went to the hospital to keep vigil.

I feel deeply for Dr. Piper's son and daughter-in-law. This must be difficult beyond what words can express. Can you imagine going from this to a baby dedication?

Fitness Challenge -- Weeks 10 & 11

The past two weeks yielded a net loss of three pounds. This put me at 33% of the way toward my goal. My rate of loss has slowed, to just under three pounds per week. Hopefully these last few weeks of running will help (and have been helping) me keep from hitting any hard walls in weight loss.

I know that my diet has not been as strong (I have eaten some more bread, not as many salads), but still have been rather consistent re: desserts, fried foods, and sugary drinks. I would like to think this is a pretty sustainable lifestyle for me, but perhaps I need to step it up a notch (again) and put the diet in overdrive.

My host doesn't seem to want me to upload an image today, so you won't see my lovely graphs just yet.

Life Update -- Job Change

Ashlee and I have lots of life transition going on right now. I haven't shared everything widely here on my blog, and won't share everything just yet.

However, I will share this now. This past Wednesday was my last day on staff at church - I put in my resignation a few weeks ago. It seems like such a huge change for us, but I have really felt like this is what we need to do. The hardest part was telling our Student Pastor that I was leaving!

I have really enjoyed and appreciated my time on staff there, and we are definitely leaving on good terms. Ashlee and I are still going to be part of our church. Tomorrow I'll be going to Sunday School with my wife! We are looking forward to that opportunity.

So what am I doing, you ask? I will continue in seminary; this semester I have a great church planting class with Dr. J.D. Payne. I am also increasing hours working as an IT consultant/software developer. This is something I have been doing part-time (in addition to my part-time ministry position and part-time seminary) for the past several months. I am increasing my hours with this.

As part of this change I will be working at home most of the time, and therefore I need to learn how to be my own boss and run my own business in a sense. Sometimes I think I already need a part-timesecretary, and it can't be Ashlee because she is covered up with teaching, graduate school, and other things. Instead I need to learn to manage better on my own.

This is an exciting time for us -- I'll share more in the future, more life updates, and more about how Ashlee and I will be involved in the ministry of our church.

Fitness Challenge -- Run 11

Van and I went 1.6 mi again last night. We ran to our goal (Waffle House -- we joked that we should stop for an omelette. I'm sure that would would have stayed down on the run back.) Last night was harder than Run 10. I developed a slight, dull pain in my side at the end of the first running leg. Later, at the end of the 2nd leg of running I started to get pain in one of my shins - shin splints I guess. It wsn't too bad, but scary because I hear about people being forced to stop running because of it.

We probably ran about 3/4 mi of the total 1 1/2 miles. Van had to stop to check his mail at the end of the street and I was ready to stop anyway!

Sometimes I think figuring out what causes your body to react differently while running is like some kind of black magic! Here are some possibilities:

• Need new shoes
• Shoes too new
• Need to drink more water before running
• Drank too much water before running
• Didn't get proper energy supply for running
• Ate too much before running
• Ate too soon before running
• Mercury and Venus aligned poorly for running
• Too hot
• Too cold
• Too many things on mind
• Need distraction in head
• Over-doing it
• Under-doing it
• Poor motivation
• Bad horoscope

Email Hacks: Use EndJunk to Fight Spam

It doesn't take long for first-time email users to realize that when they use their personal email address to register for on-line accounts, they have a sudden influx of spam. Many people combat this problem by setting up a separate email account for all their 'junk' registrations. This is a good fix, but not the best.

Another challenging situation is for people that have web sites. It can be valuable to post one's email address, but at what cost? Spammers spider web sites and find email addresses just the same.

Gmail has done us all a favor by setting up an excellent spam filter. I have just a handful of false-positives (genuine emails that get marked as spam) over a period of months, and perhaps ten spam emails that slip through the filter.

My secret weapon against spam is EndJunk.com. When you register with EndJunk, you get a subdomain of email addresses. Any email address at that subdomain gets processed however you want it. I could have one email address always get deleted, another always get forwarded to my personal email address, another get forwarded to some secondary email address.

Here are some of the beauties of this situation:

1. Each time I register with a new web site, I give them their own unique address. If I set up an account with... typepad, I would submit typepad@sundog2000.endjunk.com . (sundog2000 is my endjunk username, and therefore my subdomain.)
2. If I receive spam directed at an endjunk account -- I can tell who sent the spam! If I get spam at typepad@sundog2000.endjunk.com, I'll know they're the jerks that sold my email address! (Or, after posting this on the internet, it may be that the spam came because this site was crawled by a spambot.)
3. If I get lots of spam from a particular address, I can turn it off at EndJunk - no more spam to that address. Endjunk even keeps stats to let you know how many emails you've received at each address

In addition to these measures, I have my EndJunk account forwarding to my gmail account -- I can process my emails in one place, and Gmail's aforementioned excellent spam filter also scrubs them when they come in.

Gmail offers a plus-addressing feature that provides similar capabilities (emailaddress+typepad@gmail.com) but I've found that some web sites don't accept email addresses with +'s in them, and I don't trust this to spammers either -- it's pretty easy to lop plus addresses off of gmail accounts with a simple script.

Check out EndJunk, and leave your spam-busting tips in the comments.

Piper on Discerning the Will of God

How do you discern the will of God when faced with a choice between two non-sinful choices?

This is a loose paraphrase of John Piper's answer to this question, about 80% of the way through this audio.
99% of your life is lived un-premeditated. Almost all the choices you make in life you don't think about ahead of time. You think you do, but that's just because you only consider the big ones: getting married, going to school, etc. You make hundreds of decisions every hour.

Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
Romans 12:2

Your main effort as a student should be not to come up to lists of pros and cons but to become a kind of person that intuitively does the right thing.

The Bible for Children

I am interested in learning about Bibles to share with children.

I've heard The Jesus Storybook.

Justin Taylor just posted recommendations for this book and two others: The Read-n-Grow Picture Bible and The Big Picture Story Bible.

Any other recommendations?

First "Mega" Church Plant in Laos a Success

See the entire article here.
Ba Na, Laos - The village of Ba Na is small and simple. The residents are poor and rely heavily on their annual rice crop to feed and sustain them through another year. The people of Ba Na often struggle with finding adequate drinking water and basic health care. Most of the residents have no education and live in simple, small grass and wooden huts. The infant mortality rate is high, and the average life expectancy for men is only 39 years.
...
Over the course 18 months the church raised almost $47 million dollars toward starting up a new work in Laos. The village of Ba Na was picked because many of the residents remember the extremely poor conditions there.

Fitness Challenge -- Run 10

Again a great night of running. Van and I ran together, this time in his neighborhood. Upon measuring the distance after we finished, we realized that we went 1.6 mi, but further than that, we ran 1 mile of it. We are already half-way to completing a 5K, running and walking.

My brother is entering a 5K this weekend and the next; I am considering joining him. By alternating running half a mile with walking, I believe could complete the 5K without falling over.

Fitness Challenge -- Run 9

I didn't run at all last week. It doesn't help to have a running partner if you don't get on the same schedule and then you use that as an excuse not to run at all! (Says Nick to himself.)

Tonight I ran alone -- and this was my best run so far. I ran further than ever before ~ six tenths of a mile before stopping. Even at that point, I could have run further -- but I wanted to save myself for one last leg of running before I walked back down my street to my house. Again, that last leg came pretty easily.

Two people yelled at me from across Man'O'War while I was running -- I think it was a couple from my Sunday School class. I yelled and waved, but I had just passed my personal record distance and I didn't want to stop running to talk.

Today I was running too late for class to go to the church to weigh in, so I don't know what my weight change was this week, if anything. Pastor David has suggested that I start adding in weights. I don't care much for the time commitment that would entail...

Then again, I don't really care much for not being in shape either.

The Church - Part 4 - Analysis

This is part four in describing a minimalist definition of church.
1 - Importance of
2 - What the church is not
3 - Definition

Irreducible Ecclesiological Minimum Analyzed

“A community…”
At its core, the church is a community – people gathered. (1 Corinthians 6:19)
“… of believers with a common faith in Christ as Savior and Lord…”
The people share the same faith in the same God, sent to earth as a man to save them from their sins, now reigning in glory. (Romans 10:9, Ephesians 2:8-9)
“…seeking to both believe and live out the teachings of the Bible together…”
The Bible is the source from which they learn of Christ and grow in their faith and Christian practice. (2 Timothy 3:16, James 2:26)
“…carrying out God’s commands to love Him with heart, soul, mind, and strength…”
This “greatest” commandment will summarize their orientation toward God. (Matthew 22:37)
“…loving their neighbors as themselves.”
This second greatest commandment will summarize their orientation toward people.
(Matthew 22:38)
“In this they are compelled to carry out the Great Commission of making disciples, teaching their faith and baptizing as they go.”
Christ’s commission gives the church its mission. The church is grown and the faith is passed along. Baptism will remind all of the work of Christ and welcome new believers into the church. (Matthew 28:19-20)

Closing Thoughts

The task facing church planters is immense. Beginning this process with an unclear or unbiblical view of the church will either grow the burden of church planting or worse – equip a church planter to grow something that truly is simply a building, a charity, or a political machine, or a performance.

The Church - Part 3 - Definition

This is part three in describing a minimalist definition of church.
1 - Importance of
2 - What the church is not

Definition

A community of believers with a common faith in Christ as Savior and Lord, seeking to both believe and live out the teachings of the Bible together, carrying out God’s commands to love Him with heart, soul, mind, and strength, and loving their neighbors as themselves. In this they are compelled to carry out the Great Commission of making disciples, teaching their faith and baptizing as they go.

On the "Over-use" of Quotation "Marks"

Sometimes you just wish that invented a web site yourself. I guess "someone" beat me to it.

HT: Marko

Irreducible Ecclesiological Minimum The Church - Part 2

Here is part two in describing a minimalist definition of church. Find part one, on the importance of definition, here.

What the Irreducible Ecclesiological Minimum is Not

Considering what a church is not can be a helpful exercise. Sadly, the primary perception of many people about the church could be included in such a list. One of the most common offenses, even among Christians, is to speak of the church as if it is a building or a place. Many would explicitly deny this, agreeing with Stephen that God “does not live in houses made by men”, but implicitly they teach this, referring to events which happen “at” church or directions to the church at its address. (Acts 7:49)

Others may view church as a charity (complete with tax deductions), a political machine (to be courted by Capitol Hill), a performance, a worship service, a Bible study, or a social gathering. Each of these is either an incorrect or incomplete view of the church. The social gathering view sheds light on the fact that the church is people gathered together, but it fails to recognize a purpose or common bond. As important as corporate worship and Bible study are, the church is neither a service nor a study.

The Irreducible Ecclesiological Minimum

This semester I am taking Introduction to Church Planting, and our first "personal reflection paper" is to define the Irreducible Ecclesiological Minimum. What a mouthful -- what is the most minimal definition of the church, such that it could be taken to any people in any place at any time?

I love the class and this topic has given us good conversation fodder for the past few weeks. Here is the beginning of my paper. Influential in the second paragraph is Mark Driscoll; I believe I first read him talking about this topic in Radical Reformission: Reaching Out Without Selling Out. I don't remember if these are the exact terms he uses or not.

The Importance of Defining an Irreducible Ecclesiological Minimum

The advantages of having a clear, minimalist definition of the church are multi-faceted. Simply phrased, the church planter can know what to start and what not to start. Without a clear goal, leaders lack direction. They will expel energy building something that may not be a healthy church. Perhaps most discouraging of all, church planters without a clear goal of what they are starting are not equipped to measure their progress or even know when or if their mission is complete. A driven, faithful planter could invest his blood, sweat, and tears into a community, only to wake up two years later and not know how to measure the fruit of his labor.

There are two extremes the planter should be aware of in knowing what not to start: 1) starting non-churches, and 2) expelling great energy attempting to create a church with the cultural artifacts of a different church in another culture. These two errors may be described as syncretism and Fundamentalism. The syncretistic church blends in so much with the culture that it neuters the Gospel and fails to even be a church. The Fundamentalist church fails to distinguish between the church and the culture as well – instead presuming that replicating aspects of the culture falls within the goal of starting new churches. Here the Gospel is added to, and the result is a crippled Gospel and irrelevance in the host culture. Thus neither the syncretistic nor the Fundamentalist approach to church planting generates a God-glorifying church that is reaching people in culture.

With the prize available to the planter in having a clear definition of a church and the pitfalls of failing to have a clear definition, one may move on to the task of defining an irreducible ecclesiological minimum (IEM).

Fitness Challenge -- Runs 7 & 8

Run 7 was miserable. I was sick to my stomach before I began running. After about 1/8 mile or less I developed a sharp pain in my side. I probably only ran about 1/4 mile before slowing to a walk.

Run 8 was much better - my stomach was better and I made it back to running just under half a mile without slowing to a walk. This was a late run ~ 8:30 pm, and I managed to totally negate my efforts by going to Applebee's with Van immediately thereafter. Actually, I didn't eat anything unhealthy, but I'm sure it didn't help that it was 9:30 at night. We met Shane Parker there for some good late night hang out time.


I have not been running as frequently as I should - only twice last week.

Fitness Challenge Update -- Weeks 8 & 9

Last Monday we did not have our weekly weigh-in because of the holiday. I weighed in on other scales, and I was discouraged because they showed me gaining several pounds. Today the normal scales showed a three pound deficit from two weeks ago, though, so I think this is merely a difference in scales -- oddly, of about 10 pounds!

I am marking my weight for last week as having no change. I am so glad the scales were wrong! I would have been especially discouraged because I have begun running. This past week I only ran twice, though.

This weigh-in dropped me under a BMI of 35, and puts me at 29% of the way to my long-term weight loss goal. I am down 28 pounds.